


I feel summer creepin' in and I'm tired of this town again

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Horny Jodi Foster References, Marijuana, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26436553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: Jocelyn is quickly learning never to underestimate Moira Rose.
Relationships: Moira Rose/Jocelyn Schitt
Comments: 14
Kudos: 27
Collections: Elevate! A Schitt's Creek Femslash Exchange





	I feel summer creepin' in and I'm tired of this town again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [another_Hero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/gifts).



It’s summertime. It’s summertime and the crickets are out. It’s summertime and the crickets are out and Moira Rose is wearing all white at a Hawaiian luau that Jocelyn would have bet a million dollars she  _ never  _ would have set foot in. 

Jocelyn is quickly learning never to underestimate Moira Rose.

Moira Rose, who keeps running her hands under the hair along her neck and fanning it across her back.Jocelyn can’t help watching, which isn’t her fault, but isn’t any less true. This is Moira Rose they’re talking about; Roland isn’t the only one who’s had a hangup for Vivien Blake since TVs still had tubes.

There’s a joint in Moria’s hand, and her body has slipped down the swing enough that she’s sort of leaning her body up against Jocelyn’s. If Jocelyn dips her head, she thinks she could probably put it on Moira’s shoulders, but her heads too heavy. 

Plus, Moira beats her to it, letting her body drift the rest of the way, their arms pressed together from shoulder to elbow as Moira rests her head on Jocelyn’s shoulder. Soon Moira and Johnny have to leave to go back to the motel and slip all of that beautiful cream-colored linen to the floor. That makes Jocelyn sad, Moira leaving. But not as sad as the fact that they’re almost done with their joint. Jocelyn’s head has gone soft and fuzzy at the edges, like the world’s wrapping her brain in a blanket. It’s delightful, and it turns the crickets around the edges of the dark into little sound-stars in the summer night. The tiki torches crackle, throwing everything into longer shadows, shadows that look heavy and thick, like the kinds that hold magic and mystery. 

All the fuzz is making it hard to follow what Moira’s talking about, and of course, it doesn’t help that she talks like she swallowed a thesaurus. It’s easier to just watch the way Moira’s lips move, watch the flames from the edges of the yard play with the color in her dark-rimmed eyes. Jocelyn isn’t really listening, but she’s hearing anyway. Moira talks about her early life, being a girl not all that different from Jocelyn and  _ that  _ is so hard for Jocelyn to imagine that it makes her giggle a little, which makes Moira stop talking. Jocelyn doesn’t want Moira to stop talking, presses her shoulder gently into Moira and says something vaguely in the vein of apology for just how strong the weed is, which makes Moira’s hand flutter through the air like a moth. 

Moira chuckles and says, “you haven’t seen strong, my dear Jocelyn, until you’ve been ankles-up over the side of Jodi Foster’s chez lounge listening to Tori Amos.”

Her mouth wraps around the too-long words, and her lips are easy to watch not just because Jocelyn wants to kiss them, which is both a sudden realization and an ancient truth, and because they’re the shade of red that screams through the darkness. Jocelyn wonders if her own lips would look the same way in that shade of red, if she’d be able to slip Moira on like a mask, talk like her, walk like her. 

Without thinking, Jocelyn’s hand comes to her mouth, and she watches Moira’s eyes follow the motion; her eyes are glassy and bright, and she stops talking long enough to fold the corners of her mouth into a coy smile. Jocelyn wishes she would keep talking, and she’s smoked through enough of her filter that she doesn’t  _ decide  _ to ask for what she wants so much as does it on instinct. 

“What were you saying?” Jocelyn’s voice is low, scratchy from the smoke, and Moira’s tilting her head to the side like a bird, her eyes narrowed but her mouth still settled in that soft, gentle smiling shape. She’s still got her head on Jocelyn’s shoulder, and the tilt of her chin asking the question brings their lips close enough that Jocelyn feels like she’s about to make another choice without deciding a thing. 

Moira’s breath dusts across her lips, her green eyes relentless as they search Jocelyn’s face for details in the low lights. Jocelyn feels a gentle pressure on the edge of her kneecap, Moira’s knee as she angles her body by a fraction of an inch, enough that it could be choice and it could be the relentless pull of gravity on Moira’s increasingly stoned body. 

Behind them, someone drops something and someone else laughs about it, and it’s loud enough that it breaks something between them, breaks whatever bubble had been building between them. Jocelyn can feel Moira’s body shift away from hers, and she wants to take it back, wants to undo it, wants to press mute on the yard so that she can go back to being Moira’s resting place.

“What was who saying?”

“You, Moira. What were  _ you  _ saying? Something about Tori Amos?”

Moira’s eyes drift down, into some liminal point in space, as she takes another slow inhale and passes the joint to Jocelyn. Moira holds the smoke in her chest, tilts her chin back so she’s looking at the stars, and then claps her hands together a few times, almost bouncing in her seat as she exhales.

“Ah! Well, as I was saying, we’d just finished the screening and she told me she’d been able to find the absolute best cannabis from overseas, half of which she rolled into the most ambrosial little spliffs and half she baked into  _ actual  _ chocolate brownies. And in the middle of a national xerophagic pandemic, no less. Well, Moira Rose is no weak soldier when it comes to gluten, so of  _ course _ I had three.” She puffs out her cheeks and widens her eyes, and Jocelyn feels the laughter before she hears it, light and sparking in her chest. She laughs so hard she cries, leaning forward at the waist and practically tumbling into Moira’s lap. She laughs so hard she snorts, which makes Moira burst out in a laugh to match, and suddenly they’re both in danger of laughing so hard they flip the bench swing in the Schitt’s backyard. Jocelyn runs one arm along the back of the swing to help them regain some balance, the move bringing her even closer to Moira as Moira’s hands paw at her, one on her thigh and the other wrapping around her wrist as the two fight desperately to regain balance. 

Moria’s laughter is petering off, still bubbling out of her in little giggles that seem so unlike the Moira Rose that exists in the daytime, and heat pools in Jocelyn’s lower belly. Moira’s not laughing anymore, but she’s not letting Jocelyn go, and it’s there, whatever that electricity is that builds between two people in the dark corners of torchlit yards on summer nights. She’s about to grab her own version of the key and kite, make contact with the lightning and press her lips to Moira’s, when Roland and Johnny walk down the expanse of the yard, their voices loud and friendly in the humid night air.

“I’m telling you, Johnny, it’s an almost guaranteed moneymaker.”

“What is?” Moira asks as Johnny stops beside her, his hand landing on her shoulder. Her hand automatically comes to his, and Jocelyn thinks it’s beautiful, the way their bodies respond to one another instinctually, always finding one another, forming subtle points of contact. She leans her head to the side and finds Roland’s hip, his body warm and smelling faintly of car grease and Irish Spring. 

“You told him, didn’t you Rollie?”

“Of course I did, what kind of friend would I be to keep this kind of money out of my best friend’s pocket?”

“ _ Friend _ , Roland,” Johnny’s hand twitches in front of Roland, palm down, a move that’s supposed to be something like reassuring, and something like a reminder. “And I’m not quite sure this is the moneymaker you think it is.” Johnny rocks his weight back and forth between his heels and the balls of his feet, shaking his head a little. 

“What  _ is _ it, John?”

“Roland thinks we need to start putting complimentary  _ love kits  _ in all of the rooms.” Johnny’s eyes go wide and his eyebrows climb up his face, his mouth doing that little downturn that Moira’s spent decades learning to read, the one that almost always means,  _ ‘please god don’t humor him’ _ . “With a larger, um, supply to be purchasable at the front desk.”

“ _ Love kits,” _ Moira repeats, and Jocelyn can tell from the look that she and Johnny exchange that this idea isn’t going to be the one of Rollie’s they take. “And what, praytell, do those include?”

“Oh, you can get all sorts of kinky shit to fit into a brown paper bag,” Roland says with a suck of his teeth and a knowing nod. Moria shudders and Jocelyn stifles a laugh. 

Jocelyn is used to people not understanding what it is she sees in Roland, but she’s never needed anyone else to see it. The fact that they were able to share themselves so honestly and freely — both inside and outside of the bedroom — was just one of the things that makes the Schitts so perfect for one another. Just as perfect as the Roses in fact, if in a different way. 

“Well, I hardly need you to tell me that particular truth, dear, I spent an entire summer with Jacqueline Bisset once,” Moira says, slipping Johnny’s hand from her shoulder and using it to brace with as she stands, only slightly wobbly on her feet. He’s got to spin his body half-around to catch her, but she’ll be able to pass it off as the high heels without a problem once she’s vertical. “I think it’s time we be getting back to the motel, then, John.”

“Absolutely, Moira.” Johnny turns back to the Schitt’s with a shrug that doesn’t look at all reluctant. “Roland, Jocelyn, thank you so much for this lovely evening.” He shakes Roland’s hand with his free one, going in for half a hug with Jocelyn, patting her awkwardly on the back, all the while holding on to Moira’s hand. Moira ducks in to kiss Jocelyn on both cheeks, giving Jocelyn one last chance to admire that Moira Rose red up close, to smell the subtle mix of lingering pot smoke and Chanel perfume that Moira always wears.

“Thank you both so very much.”

And it’s not until later that Jocelyn realizes she never really heard the story it was Moira was trying to tell her. The one that started with Jodi Foster and ended with the pot brownies. 

*

The ensuing years take on that kind of fuzzy quality of the generally good, mostly unremarkable passage of time. Years that mean new business and new babies, Moira becoming more and more entrenched with the Jazzagals,Johnny and Roland getting further and further entwined financially, and Jocelyn starts to forget the shape of her life before the Roses. When Jocelyn and Roland decide to become business partners with the Roses, Jocelyn is thrilled to realize she’ll never have to.

As soon as Johnny knows about the RMG meeting in New York, he calls Roland, who tells Jocelyn, who hops on him so energetically they break the center plank of the couch. They scramble to get a sitter, and get ahold of Ronnie, and although they don’t make it in time for Moira’s toast to David and Patrick, they do manage to make it to the Wobbly Elm in time for plenty of celebratory drinks. 

“I tell you, Jocelyn when it comes to any kind of culinary sagaciousness this town is absolutely penurious,” Moira says as she picks over the platters of food spread on the pool table. She manages to do it without dirtying the edges of her lace bell sleeves, which have the odd effect of making everyone else look ridiculously  _ under _ dressed.

“I’m sure George does the best he —”

“You know what makes every comestible endeavor more scrumptious?” Moria asks, standing up and leaning conspiratorially close to Jocelyn. She wiggles her eyebrows and makes the closest thing Jocelyn has ever seen to puppy dog eyes on Moira’s face. 

“Moira…”

“I don’t suppose you have any more of that delicious grass on you, do you?” She adds a few extra beats to the middle of the word, drawing it out and over her tongue in that way that Jocelyn has never heard another person replicate, and she blushes.

“Moira,” Jocelyn says, her voice lightly scolding. “That would be a  _ deeply  _ unethical thing for the wife of the mayor to be travelling with in public spaces.”

Moira just nods, and winks, and pats Jocelyn gently on the shoulder. “Indeed.”

Jocelyn rolls her eyes, dropping any attempt at civic professionality, a smile creeping across her face. They’ve learned each other's lying faces too well over the intervening years. “Let me ask Rollie.”

Moria nods slowly, taking a long drink out of something that might be a martini if the Wobbly Elm had ever bothered to stock anything close to vermouth. She sucks the liquid off her teeth and Jocelyn's eyes fall to Moira's mouth, to that same shade of red she's admired for years as the smile that finds its way there is indulgent and sultry. 

“Perfect,  _ mon amie _ . Let’s reconvene in the back, shall we? No need to risk any unnecessary interlopers,  _ nes pas? _ ”

Moira must have more sheets to the wind than Jocelyn had originally thought if she’s slipping into another language before midnight, but Jocely just nods and presses a small kiss to Moira’s dry, warm cheek as the other woman passes. “See you in a minute, Moira.”

She watches Moira make her way towards the back door of the Wobbly Elm, sidling up to Roland and slipping a hand in his pocket, wrapping her hand around the silver cigarette case he inherited from his father. He jerks a little, feeling her tug on his jacket pocket, and then immediately wraps his arm around her shoulder, tugging her close into his side.

“Hey, babe!”

“Hey, Rollie. Hey, Johnny, congratulations on the pitch meeting! Roland is so excited for the chance to get to head to the big city.”

Johnny’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth opens and closes a few times while Ronnie chuckles into her glass. “Yes...me and—and Roland. Together. To the big city.”

“Aw, I thought you’d never ask, Johnny,” Roland says, leaning forward to punch Johnny lightly on the shoulder as the other man nods, and Jocelyn slips the case from Roland’s pocket. 

“I’m going to meet Moira outside,” she says to Roland quietly, and his eyes immediately drop to her hand and he nods.

“Of course, babe. Have fun.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head, letting his arm fall from her shoulder.

She nods, and presses a kiss to his stubbly cheek, patting him on the ass as she walks by, which earns a wolf whistle from Ronnie, the sound muffled as the door to the back of the Wobbly Elm closes behind Jocelyn. 

Moira is sitting half a dozen yards away at the edge of the parking lot, picking at the edges of her sleeves as she perches on the worn wooden bench. 

“Jocelyn,” she says, waving her hand in the air like there’s anyone else in the back of the bar that Jocelyn Schitt would be going to see at that moment. “Over here!”

“I see you, Moira,” Jocely says, slipping onto the bench beside her and popping open the cigarette case with one hand. She holds it out to Moira, who wiggles her fingers like she’s plucking off the cheeseboard before she takes the joint nearest her.

“Ah, sweet Margaret Jane’s Folly,” Moira says fondly, and Jocelyn wonders not for the first time if the way she speaks is a rich-people thing or comes from some specific blend of wealth and eccentric that can only be described as  _ Moira Rose _ . “You know, I have to say, Jocelyn, there is no one in this town as punctilious with begirding their pharmaceutical panaceas.”

“Thank you, Moira,” Jocelyn says with a soft smile and a little nod of her head. It’s the standard reaction she’s adopted when she doesn't  _ really  _ have any idea what Moira is saying. She digs into the purse slung over her shoulder and holds out a lighter, flicking it once with her thumb as Moira leans over and holds the tightly rolled end of the join in the flame. She inhales, and the end flares once, twice, and on the third time Moira waves it through the air to put out the flame, sitting back and letting the smallest slipstream of smoke escape the corner of her mouth. “So. How  _ was  _ the escape room?”

“Well, it was no private evening with Jodi Foster,” Moira says with a knowing little nod, “as I’m sure you can imagine.” 

Jocelyn starts to nod her head, then pauses and shakes it. “Actually, Moira, I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Ah,” Moira says, letting her head fall back on her neck as she tries to squint at the stars through the streetlight, and Jocelyn remembers the last time they’d sat like this, in the warm press of summer, Jocelyn too busy watching Moira’s mouth to listen to the story she was telling about…

“You know, now that you bring it up. I seem to remember something about the scent of Irish Spring?”

Moira’s shoulders shake with a fond little chuckle. “Yes, yes. One of Jodi’s lesser-known signature scents. A leftover from childhood, to hear her tell it.”

“Well, that’s nice.”

“Oh, it is dear. Especially combined with the  ineradicable taste of Crest Cinnamon toothpaste, another favorite in the Foster household, as I was fortuitous enough to learn that night.” Her hand is raised, holding the joint like a cigarette. Jocelyn leans forward and plucks it out of her fingers. When she speaks, her voice is huskier than she’d expected.

“Well, it sounds like you were quite the student that night, Moira.”

“Oh, I was,” Moira leans forward and wraps her fingers around the joint, grazing the back of Jocelyn’s hand as she does it. “As I said, Jocelyn. Tonight was not exactly the best panic room experience I’ve ever had.”

There’s a pause in the air between them, a shift in the air that brings Moira’s face closer to Jocelyn’s as Jocelyn leans forward and inhales the peaty, rough smoke into the bottom of her lungs, holds it there as she lets a hand come up to cup the side of Moira’s face. Her skin is warm, and dry, and soft, the kind of soft that comes with more than Aveeno and a singular moisturizing step, and the world that Moira exists in lies in front of Jocelyn like a fun-house mirror, so close to and still so ultimately far from her own. 

Jocelyn expects Moira to stop before their lips touch, is counting on that little cushion of space she’d seen between Moira and Johnny in her back yard all those summers ago. So she almost loses the hit when Moira doesn’t stop, doesn’t keep any space between her lips and Jocelyn’s as she opens her mouth and inhales, drawing the smoke from Jocelyn’s lungs deeply, and slowly, strong enough that Joce’s cheeks begin to sink a little, her mouth at the mercy of Moira’s.

And at some point, even Jocelyn has to admit — they’re not shotgunning a hit anymore. Not when Moira’s lips stay pressed to hers even as she exhales the smoke through her nose; not as Jocelyn’s tongue presses softly at Moira’s bottom lip, dragging along that deep red color she’s loved so long; not when Moira seems to soften against her, a hand coming to cup Jocelyn’s cheek in a mirror image of Jocelyn’s hold on Moira. 

Time seems to stop, dragging into one long, slow kiss, exchanged between women who have come to admire each other as much as they snip at each other, who love each other as much as they know they can do so without ever fully being able to understand the other. It’s a kiss that means years and families and the kind of exploration of sense and self that doesn’t ever stop, even as the pages of the calendar fly by.

It’s the kind of kiss that lasts until Roland comes through the back door of the Wobbly Elm, his arm looped through Johnny’s, and the kiss ends as the rest of the celebratory night begins.

**Author's Note:**

> I had such an AMAZING time writing for Elevate, and am *so glad* this fandom is about to be awash in the femslash it so rightly deserves. Thank you so much to the organizers, my lovely prompter, and of course, readers like you <3


End file.
